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One of the posts I've been meaning to write about, but wanted to give things time to cool down before writing it. Plus I was neck deep in contract consulting work that I didn't really have a chance to sit down and think about it.
At the time I wasn't looking, and have had mixed results with the interviewing process. To put it mildly, I have never really tested well, and this extended towards how I interview for jobs where I'll do very well or freeze during the coding segments leading to very inconsistent results. If the future employer is willing to take the chance, then they tend to be pleasantly surprised. For those whom have been willing to share why they passed on me in the past, it has always come down preferring a false negative instead of a false negative. Partially due to how expensive it is to terminate a poor performer, but particularly in the tech sector, a mismatched employee can do far more harm to the team and product than good.
For those not familiar with Triplebyte they are a head-hunting firm that front-loads the technical screening with an initial quiz to gauge your level, then a two hour technical interview. The results are written up, and after you complete your profile of desired jobs, then it goes live for a week as potential future employers reach out to schedule short calls to sell you on what they do, and why you should work there. You even get a dedicated hiring consultant to help you through the process. Based on those phone screens, then you can pick which companies to visit for the engineer's traditional 4-6 hour on-site interview. Lastly, as a result the initial 2 hour technical interview provided after the quiz, at the time you were guaranteed not to have to undergo another white-boarding coding style interview. Given this was my weak spot, it sounded like a perfect fit.
From an interviewee's perspective, this shotgun approach can be a little overwhelming given how fast the process works and how many phone screens you have that can lead to a potential on-site interview. The entire process for me took about 3 weeks. However, I am one of the lucky contestants that struck out. Some was on me, and I did have one very close call with one company that I wasn't even aware of until I went through the process (and if given the chance, wouldn't mind taking another stab to work with them). However, the rest ended up boiling down to two issues that I had seen:
The bait and switch part did rattle me a bit. To put things in context, I have no problems with the whiteboard when it comes to laying out the rough structure of the code, but I have seen interviewers treat it like a text editor expecting correct code. Given the growing popularity of things like coderpad or spare laptops provided for on-site interviews to demonstrate in close to actual conditions helps a bit. Even in these scenarios, I'm still a very slow coder whom is easily distracted so the paired programming experience doesn't usually go over well.
The biggest issue that I had, and is what prompted me to write this post, is the mismatch of skills. To provide context, I grew up teaching myself C and later Java. I've done some Ruby as well, but it is far weaker than the other two. I have done some JavaScript and PHP to support some frontend/UI work, but needless to say, my focus is more on the backend. The Triplebyte profile had been setup to reflect this fact, however most of the calls that I did receive were looking for Python or JavaScript/NodeJS. Of course, one doesn't know about this until they go through the phone screen or take a chance on-site.
In summary: as a shortcut for the interview process, I do see value from both the employer and candidate. For people straight out of school learning JavaScript or Python, this does helps getting one's feet wet. For the more seasoned developer such as myself who's skills may not quite align, the only real benefit is exposure to companies that you may not have been aware of before the process. Lastly, one thing I did discover is once you go through the process, there is a mandatory six month cool-down period before you can go through it again regardless of how you did.